


Honeypot

by Randstad



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 02:21:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4589382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Randstad/pseuds/Randstad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of a seduction, Napoleon accidentally scratches the surface of Illya's trust issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honeypot

They have not a joint mission but two that coincidentally intersect in the migrant communities of Italy. Gaby is still in Morocco, sweeping up vestiges of a mess she left; for the sake of convenience Illya and Solo take rooms in the same hotel, four floors apart and facing opposite sides of Padua.

It feels too soon to be in Italy, after the last crisis. The city feels too complacent. And Illya has no love for the sanctimoniousness of the Christian Democrats, the rise and fall of fashion houses. But the work they do is above party lines, the indolence of populations, consumerist interest. Waverly has described it all as foundational, necessary to avert global catastrophe, and Illya’s interest in aversion of disaster feels at this point commonsense.

The paths of history yet to come seem lined with treachery. Waverly is a better man, more honorable, than Illya’s old handlers at the KGB. But of even this he cannot be sure.

He’s still not sure of Napoleon Solo, either. But they have progressed, inch by inch, from tepid distances on balconies to tepid distances on park benches. Dinner sometimes, once on the French Riviera, another time under a bridge for a stakeout in the rain.

Macarons now, seated on the ridge of a fountain in the streets of Padua’s eponymous capital. Solo eats his with a cloth napkin spread out on the lap of his suit; he’s been in the field for weeks now, so the taste of bakery goods and the feel of his usual finery must be of some comfort to him. Illya, who does not have a sweet tooth and stopped after one, looks over his case file in the fading daylight. Heavily redacted, half of it black bars.

“Who is this?”

“Anatolio Topalli, heir to an arms dealer fortune,” Solo says. “He’s in university now, just got an apprenticeship to his father’s company to clear the way for the chairmanship this year. His father, an older gentleman, supposedly has one last big black market job planned before his retirement, and so I need to find out what exactly it entails.” He dabs the napkin delicately against his mouth. “You?”

“Chemists,” Illya says, shutting the case file and handing it over. “Poison gas development.”

“All right here in Padua?”

“Is research conference season. Cover for collaborations among scientifically-minded entrepreneurs.”

Solo makes a noncommittal sound as he tucks the envelope back into his jacket. “And you intend to pass for a scientist how, exactly?”

“A hobbyist. Lower commitment.”

“Ah. Braccia rubate all’agricoltura.”

“Precisely.”

Solo smirks into the lip of his water bottle and passes the bag back. Illya accepts the bag and closes it to a crumple, considers the weather, sewer access points. Solo then rises and shakes out his napkin before folding it into a neat square.

“Well, then,” he says. “I’d best get going. Nightlife’s about to start.”

“You have time to celebrate, cowboy?”

“Part of the job,” Solo says, but there’s a shade of annoyance in his typical levity. “You’re welcome to join me, should you find yourself available. We’ll have to part ways at about 2200 hours, plenty of time for you to sample martinis.”

Illya ignores him.

“Suit yourself,” Solo says, but he’s accustomed now to these silences. “Arrivederci.” He takes his suitcase and heads two blocks down the street before he hails a cab.

Illya, for his part, walks back to their hotel. He spares a thought for Solo’s reluctance to visit the nightclubs tonight. It’s a neutral one, curious. Typically Solo is overeager for these social clubs: he likes to preen, let his hands wander over wristlets and watches, steal the earrings from earlobes and then finally the breath from his later company. He’s only ever faintly harassed about the size of his list of obligations, not the specifics of where they may take him.

Illya has work of his own to do, a long itinerary between now and his next destination. He may do a drive-by later, in case Solo requires an extraction. These checks are obligatory now, part of the cadence of his life. Solo will fuck it all up, Illya will get him. They’re a team.

 

-

 

At about 2300 hours Illya takes his suitcase to the exterior of the Topelli manor as directed by his tracking device, takes temporary residence on one of the upper tiers of the garden that curves up into the hillsides. The grass is too neat, too green and clean-cut to hide in, but the darker hedges finish the job that his black tactical outfit starts.

He puts on his headset, adjusts the the volume and frequency past the crackle of static until an unfamiliar voice sings in first: “Mr. _Fortuna_ —”

“Not yet on a first-name basis yet, are we?” Solo says, unsubtle as blood on snow in both his speech and, as Illya observes when he raises his binoculars, the way he crowds Topalli against the wall. Anyone could crowd a young man like Topalli this way, slight as he is. “That’s alright. We’re here to get better acquainted.”

A husk in his voice, like the warm cloak of liquor. More likely fake than not. The man is a shepherd; he corrals with his voice instead of a cane.

But Illya’s jaw sticks when Solo takes a knee. Solo’s eyes glitter up at Topalli, devilish blue.

“I like your suit,” the voice sails smooth and slow through the intercom. “Quite an eye on you, to match this belt and these shoes.”

One hand skims up the back of a calf. The other down, beneath the ankle, signet ring on the inside of ankle bones.

Illya has used this same grip to cripple, immobilize. Does not recognize its purpose now, nor the tenderness in Solo’s touch.

An easy clap onto hardwood, one brown leather brogue and then the other. Topalli is half an inch shorter now but seems happy for how it closes the distance between the top of his waist and Solo’s head; he lets out a breath, wavering, and Solo gently drinks in his apprehension, lets that smile roll open across his face.

“They’ll still match on the floor,” Solo points out.

“Oh, God,” Topalli says, whines almost, a dog in heat.

So simple, so susceptible, the human body. Illya loses the battle against the urge to roll his eyes: Gaby’s habit, not his. The gesture further proves itself a distraction, unsuited to him—his intercom picks up in shriek form the rustle as Topalli’s trousers open; he raises the binoculars instinctively, and the sight of Solo’s mouth wrapped around Topalli’s cock makes him startle.

He lowers the binoculars, sits for a minute. Then raises them again to find one of Topalli’s legs hooked in reckless surrender over one of Solo’s sizable shoulders, head thrown back, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed as Solo—

Illya lowers the binoculars again, lets his jaw clench and unclench.

He packs his case and leaves.

 

-

 

Their rendezvous point the night after is the restaurant in their hotel, where Illya has a fabricated reservation and an equally fabricated pass to the international ornithology convention. He does not indulge his cover much, has no time to read about birds. At a corner table Solo, back in crisp linen, gives the waitress his usual smile, basks in her skittish blush and her escape.

Illya sits down. “You look like shit.”

“Sweet talker.” He sounds like shit too, though, hoarse from a sleepless night. From getting his throat fucked, perhaps. Illya does not want to imagine. Does anyway, the effortlessness with which Solo must take cock.

He shakes himself, says, “Did you get information?”

The waitress sets down a mineral water by Solo’s wrist; he drinks it gratefully, and manages a shake of his head at the end. “Not nearly enough. Round two tonight.”

“You are not enjoying this.”

“Hard to deny I do favor the honeypot over the tar pit.” The bottle back on the table, a heavy clink of glass. “But he’s just a kid. Snoop or no snoop, how’s he supposed to know what his father’s planning?”

Illya shifts in his chair. “So you _were_ sent to interrogate the boy, not simply to search the home?”

“Well, they believe he knows something. But just because he files the paperwork doesn’t mean he actually reads it. And in the meantime he’s quite terribly confused about his life, his inclinations. And in comes a man who ... well, he’s me.” He dances a hand in the air, as if his charms are self-evident. “Typically I like to meddle in the affairs of adults, not chart the courses of children for darker waters.”

Of course. In Russia such proclivities are not looked upon kindly. Illya had known boys who were sent to hospitals, had read the files of teenagers irrevocably marked for their instability because they hadn’t known better than to keep their dalliances private. And people of the west are even more susceptible to outside influences, weak to kind words.

“My country would not ask such things,” Illya says. “Is sordid.”

“No, I understand your country likes to cut its pound of flesh from a different part of the animal.” Solo wets his lips, signals for another scotch. “But with all our countries combined, every part of the animal is serviceable now.”

Illya receives his glass of water late and does not acknowledge the server when she sets it down. “I haven’t known you to doubt this manner of work.”

“I have an independent thought now and then.” The way his smile spreads suggests he has them frequently. There’s tension in his shoulders, a peevish tap of his ring against his glass. The curve of his hand on the whiskey brings to Illya’s mind, unbidden and unwelcome, the image of that hand splayed sweetly on rayon and wool fabric. “But needs must. You’d do worse in my position, by which I mean more extreme. You’re lucky you’re better-suited to beating men to death with your bare hands." His voice is terribly glib. “Otherwise, you would know that leash you mentioned some months back doesn’t stop at your balls. It’s Miss Teller’s misfortune too, being such a doll.”

Illya feels his hand tremble its way into a fist. “You should not imply such things.” About Gaby. About Solo himself too, really. His weariness in this case, on behalf of a confused university student, stirs unpleasantness in the pit of Illya’s stomach.

“It’s a truth you’ve seen for yourself by now, Peril.” His head lolls sideways, cuts Illya a look that’s more curious than anything. “Or was that not you in the hedge maze last night?”

In the reflection of the mirrored wall of the bar, Illya sees, rather than experiences meaningfully, the crush of wood beneath his hand as he renders the table in two.

On his feet, Illya waits for the red to subside from the corners of his vision; Solo stares with guarded distaste at his cracked glass, the scotch spattered on the floorboards. He looks up when Illya leans in, and despite his fury Illya still has the presence of mind, always, to drop his voice when he leans in.

“We are _spies_ ,” he hisses. “Not _whores_.”

And he has no desire for it to sound the way it sounds. His anger exists at the nexus point of where their three countries converge, not at the man still seated before him, whose brow is knitted, whose guarded distaste has transformed wholesale into guarded displeasure.

He opens his mouth to retort. There’s cruelty in his eyes, familiar, and Illya in his rage readies himself.

And then Solo’s eyes cut away, and then he’s on his feet; his hands, stronger sometimes than Illya expects, fist in the lapels of Illya’s shirt and thrust him into the wreck of the table. Illya lifts his own hands to shove, punch. Of course Solo does not understand, could never understand. Solo has pride, but not honor. These Americans, their distinctions so few and infantile. Illya pivots on his heel to press Solo into the pile of shattered wood instead, the sound thunderous in the restaurant. How could Solo know, or ever know, sacrifices such as those Illya’s mother made on his behalf, what it truly means to use the body as currency—

He expects another flip, but it doesn’t come. Solo just clutches him, leans up, twists so he can knock a knee gently against Illya’s side to keep him there. “My apologies, Peril,” he says, breathes, and kisses him, biting his lips, sliding his tongue sinfully inside, and Illya gasps, lets his hands fist again but this time in Solo’s suit jacket, the storm of his anger quelled only by confusion, by the scotch-sweet warmth of Solo’s mouth—

“Alexander?” a voice rings out from the doorway, shocked.

Topalli. Illya lurches up, spins around, but Solo fumbles out from beneath him and says, “Anatolio?”

A voice of perfect rumpled dismay. Anatolio, heartbroken suddenly in his slim suit and brown belt and shoes, turns tail and flees.

There’s a ripple on Solo’s face as his actor’s mask falls away, from the paramour caught in his act of betrayal to the consummate professional whose job has abruptly taken a turn for the more complex. And then at the end of that ripple, the man himself, who turns his gaze back to Illya’s face. Illya, who cannot move, suspended somewhere between atomic fury and vacuous bewilderment.

Solo glances down at his mouth, which feels warm still, changed somehow from the press of Solo’s teeth. They both frown simultaneously, the helpless rhythm of partners.

Solo cocks his head towards the door. “I have to ...”

Go after him, see through his jilted lover’s theatrics. Illya, ten times the professional, understands.

Out loud, and in his best Italian accent, which is still not very good: “Fine,” he spits, “then _go_. See if I give one shit.”

Illya gives him hard shove away from the wreck of wood, and Solo scrambles out from beneath. “I’m sorry, Professor,” Solo-as-Fortuna says, breathless, “I simply can’t seem to keep my datebook in order—”

“I said _go_ , you degenerate—”

Solo’s hand on his cheek, warm. “I would be happy to discuss this later,” he says, “straighten out any controversies, say, after another drink?”

“You filthy little,” Illya says, and he doesn’t want to say _whore_ , not again, but ultimately there’s no need to finish: Solo is already out the door after the asset. Which leaves Illya in the middle of the hotel bar, with its expansive tiled floors and dim yellow crystal chandeliers, and people agape.

He glares around the room, waits for the last of the diners to shudder their attention back into its proper place, and then leaves swiftly for his room. After all, a professor who studies birds will not have the cash to leave behind for property damage; repairs will have to come directly out of Waverly’s pocket.

 

-

 

Solo is gone for two days, this time. To maintain his cover Illya actually attends a day of the conference, which proves surprisingly educational—and he manages at last to tag the biologist he needs to find. A simple tracker in the cuff of his boot, and soon he’ll be at the biochemist’s convention in a week’s time, where he and a cabal of researchers will meet to discuss their plans for the cheap production and underhanded sale of VE equivalents on the black arms markets. Incredible, to Illya, the lows to which capitalism drives men of the west. Everyone beneath their skin a murderer.

He does not linger overlong on his success, hunkers down instead over his portable chessboard. There’s the gentle sway of a record in the background, his lone homage to Gaby, her slight smile and the citrus smells of her hair.

The knock on the door is unexpected, and his hand is halfway to his knife when the unwanted voice rises from behind the cheap cream wood: “Professor,” Solo says, “please, let me explain.”

Illya finds his fingers at the head of a pawn. “You should not be here,” he says loudly. His accent, only loosely Italian. He means it in both voices. His jaw retains the memory of Solo’s hand, and not as it should: his mind lingers on the caress rather than the dozens of punches they’ve exchanged, the warmth of his palm, nimble fingers.

“I wanted to see you.”

Tenderness in his voice, like their duties typically forbid. There’s an irritated flare in Illya’s gut. What transpired he can’t so much as name and yet Solo pushes, pushes. He takes what is not his to have. Such is his nature.

“I’m not leaving until you let me in, Professor,” Solo says. “I’ll sleep out here in the hall, catch my death of a cold. They’ll be sweeping my bones into the garbage come morning room service, Professor, have pity—”

Illya opens the door. “Thirty seconds in the hall and you make a fool of yourself.”

Solo, in his shirtsleeves, grins. “That’s a new record for your patience, Peril,” he says, honeyed low notes. He holds up one bottle, two glasses pinched between three fingers, and Illya grits his teeth, does not step back but allows him to pass.

He steps inside the room, takes a cursory look around at a room virtually identical to his own suite. He hesitates for a palpable moment, then sits down in one of the accent chairs, gestures for Illya to sit across from him. Illya, for now, elects to stand.

Solo hunkers forward, uncharacteristically quiet as he pours out the whiskey. He doesn’t reach for his, though, and doesn’t offer Illya the other glass either. Just sits.

Finally he clears his throat, again uncharacteristic. He’s uncomfortable, Illya realizes. But he’s too uncomfortable himself to relish the taste.

“I think we’re on the precipice of a number of misunderstandings,” Solo begins. He would have been a competent politician in another life. Circles his problems like a vulture, awaits their slow demise. “And I like to head off problems before they start, so ...”

He gestures again at the seat across from him. When Illya sits at last, he says, “I spoke to Waverly about your concerns.”

It’s not the confession, or the lead-in to an argument, that Illya was expecting. He considers being affronted that Solo thinks he is so vulnerable, so amateur, as to need reassurance from a supervisor that his work is cut and dry. But surprise sticks his irritation in his throat.

“Before you go thinking I’d do you any favors in getting the girl, I will say they were my concerns as well. Miss Teller is talented, but it’s an unpleasant prospect.”

“... what did he say to you,” Illya says.

Solo smiles, wide and hapless. “He mostly told me to mind my own business, but I believe the subtext was that most tasks of that nature fall under my skillset, not either of yours.” And then his smile drops somewhat, and he leans forward, hands clasped. “But if she elects to take on work of that nature, Peril, you should consider making your peace with it a priority. She is, as she says, her own woman.”

And she is. Illya believes it. But he still has to shut his eyes to stave off the images that flood his mind, again unwanted, again unwarranted: Gaby and other men, her hard eyes turned coquettish. It should be impossible. Should be.

But Illya is not naive. He knows what’s expected of each of them. Sacrifice, in many forms, to each according to their strengths. That doesn’t stop his hands from tightening, flexing, itching to wrap themselves around the throat of these phantom marks.

“I don’t like it for her,” he says.

Solo’s expression sobers. “I know.”

He slams his fist on the table; the chessboard jumps, the wood cracks. “I do not like it for you, either.”

And it’s not the impact of his hand on the table that does it, but the words: Solo startles. His body translates the reflex immediately into a smooth shift in his seat, and he’s quiet, his silence deliberate and measured like that of a musician’s.

His eyes, fixed on Illya’s face, are searching. “... you know I’m very good at it.”

It’s not the point. Far from it, and they both know that. Solo also knows that he knows, and by now Illya knows Solo well enough to recognize when the man is waiting for his rival across the card table to show his hand.

But Illya does not even recognize his own hand, does not recognize his body in these moments as a thing that can be harmed or controlled. Fury still lances through him, a storm that formed out in the unknown seas of his mind.

“And you hardly seemed to mind when I slept with a literal Nazi,” Solo says, dry humor in his tone.

Illya flexes his hands, tries to calm the tendons. His body, in fits and spurts, remembers pain. “Was different. Saved the world.”

“It’s sort of our thing, saving the world. Sometimes that involves tripping and falling into a bed.”

He’s right. And the only reason Solo’s current series of affairs prior to this mission had been cut short was constant movement across continents, jobs that required his mind over his matter. It’s only good fortune on his part that his newest tasklist practically required physical contact, required him to cull secrets from touch-starved skin.

But that doesn’t stop Illya’s hands from itching, aching. He grits his teeth, reaches a hand over to twist his watch on his wrist. Solo’s eyes follow the gesture, and then there’s a flicker in his eyes, perhaps recognition.

And then—he smiles.

No teeth this time, just a smile, frank and over-familiar. Like the space between them is for reading, and he just discovered the text to be in a language he recognizes. A language that must feel good on the tongue.

“But then,” he says, “I suppose we’re friends now, by certain and select definitions. It’s only proper to be concerned.”

“I was not concerned,” Illya says.

“Jealous, then?” Solo offers, and for a second Illya considers what it would be like to knock out all of his teeth, knuckle by knuckle, all the way to the pristine fake molar in the back, the real one lost in the war.

But he doesn’t. Almost doesn’t. His hands, how they itch. “Do not joke,” he says through gritted teeth.

“I’m not,” Solo says firmly, and Illya almost believes him. It doesn’t save the table, which goes flying across the living room, chess pieces everywhere, the bottles and glasses shattered. “Illya, we _will_ have to pay for that—”

“Do not—”

Solo rubs his face with his hands. “Would you just let me—”

“No,” Illya says. He has allowed too much already, on the job and out of it. This taskforce was a mistake from the outset, the man too repulsive, the girl too stubborn, and Illya always at his most competent alone— “Leave.”

“I like you too, you complete lunatic,” Solo says, and through the hot humiliation that congeals in Illya’s stomach, the anger that engulfs his vision in red but suddenly paralyzes his hands and feet, Solo reaches for him.

His hand ends up on Illya’s face again, pulls him in for another kiss. Their second this week. His mouth is warm even without the taste of scotch that had been there two nights previous, the slide of his tongue into Illya’s mouth insidious. Illya forgets to breathe, his hands shaking, kisses back ravenously, his hands fists and then not—

“That’s it, Peril,” Solo murmurs. His own hands skim up Illya’s sides, untuck his shirt, rove fever-hot beneath over ribs and muscle. And then one hand at the small of his back, guiding, the way one would gentle a panicked horse. “Glad we straightened this out.”

Illya feels his hands clutch in Solo’s shirt and slumps, catches his breath raggedly against Solo’s jaw. In the background the record has stopped. Solo staggers, just a little, from the abrupt press of his weight.

“Come on, now,” Solo says, “there we are,” and then they’re awkwardly mobile. The floor beneath their feet changes from marble tile to the carpet of the bedroom.

Perhaps Solo intends to put him to bed, the weight in his limbs misread as weariness and not the sludge of his emotions all collected in his joints. A child that needs to be tucked in. Solo, always surprising in his sentimentality. As if he didn’t forfeit it all as a war profiteer.

“We can talk about this later,” Solo says. And then, more amused, more faintly as he moves to pull away: “And then I think the three of us could use a long chat with HR.”

Illya feels the back of his knees hit the low footboard. Reflex takes over; he comes to his senses long enough to turn them around, curl his hand back in Solo’s shirt, shove him back down against the thousand-count sheets, their weights inverted entirely. Solo falls back with a surprised huff and looks up at him. He pulls his knee up again, and then the mirth is back in his eyes, that smirk back on his mouth.

“So good of you to join us,” he says.

“Stop speaking,” Illya mutters, so he can focus his hands on finding their way around Solo’s wrists, pinning them down.

All this so he can look first. Solo’s eyes bright and watchful, as ready to fight as he is to fuck. The seams of his shirt straining beneath his bulk. Over two hundred American pounds and yet none of it quite enough to overpower Illya, who can break an arm by grabbing and twisting, who has never looked a man in the eye without thinking about how to kill him.

Solo knows all this. Would have learned even without the case file. Yet the limpness of Solo’s hands in Illya’s grip, the slight spread of his thighs, it still feels too much like trust.

These are more words that Illya cannot communicate. The word “like” is trite, others unthinkable, and anyway too soon, these fledgling thoughts too young to be believed. But Solo, again, is a consummate professional, a consummate communicator. His knee rises to fit itself delicately in the inseam of Illya’s trousers, pushes up against where his cock craves attention in his briefs beneath.

Lust reaches a hot hand deep into the pit of Illya’s belly, clenches, makes his heart strike like hammers on steel on every beat. He growls, a sound that seems to delight Solo: he surges up, meets Illya halfway for another kiss while Illya frees his hands, reaches down to claw his clothes apart.

There is paltry satisfaction to be found in Solo’s subtle flinch at the sound of ripping fabric and scattered buttons, but more in the way his back arches off the bed when Illya ducks his head to skim his mouth over the skin beneath, the soft curse that tumbles out of his mouth when Illya scrapes his teeth over nipples and bites down harder on his collarbone.

He presses his knee up in retaliation, waits with another smirk for Illya’s own soft swear, then fits it outside Illya’s waist, draws him down so he can work off Illya’s jacket. He also takes this opportunity to rut lazily upwards, his hips too accustomed to finding the right way to slide against another’s: the press of his erection against Illya’s beneath the trousers of his bespoke suit is almost too good, for all the nothing that it is, too simple a distraction from the equally idle way Solo works off the buttons of his shirt.

Solo’s eye draws down as he eases it off Illya’s shoulders; his brow knits briefly. Illya knows why without having to speculate. They are incorrect mirror images of one another, the two of them, inverses from different worlds. Solo’s vanity drives him to meticulous wound care, the skin beneath his clothes near-unmarred; he has scars, but their discovery would take time, an investigative eye. Illya, who is accustomed to ignoring the demands of his body, has the history of his work writ on his skin.

“Doesn’t your job come with healthcare?”

“We have same insurance,” Illya says, and Solo actually snickers. His hands on Illya’s sides turn from curious to attentive; he draws Illya in again, grinds up into him, his mouth sweet on Illya’s jaw. They’re kissing again before Illya knows it, Solo’s mouth firm and yielding all at once, the room quiet save for breath and the shift of bodies.

All of it slow. Not at all like what Illya might have imagined it to be like, in the singular moments he might have imagined it at all. Like Solo still feels the need to pull him out of the bedlam of his thoughts, the shepherd again, the manipulator.

At last Solo grins. His hand slips down to give Illya’s ass a squeeze. “So, Peril,” he says conversationally.

Illya glares at him. As much as one can glare, with the front of his pants tented and wet, his body a nest of low-burning flames. “Cowboy.”

“Ever thought about riding lessons?”

Instinct and prejudice make the thought curdle in Illya’s belly. And yet, all the same, he thinks of it: the bodies that must have known the warmth of that lap, his massive thighs, the swell of his cock. The things Solo would do with his hands at the small of Illya’s back, his mouth on Illya’s chest, and permission to speak freely, to assume control. His slapdash work in infiltrating Illya’s life terribly, terrifyingly complete.

“No,” Illya says firmly. In part to distract himself from the speed with which his revulsion at the thought subsides. “I am going to fuck you.”

The darkness in Napoleon’s eyes swells, two black ink pools in a thinning sea of blue. Napoleon, Illya’s mind concedes. The devil he knows. “Oh,” he says. And then: “Alright, then.”

“I am going to do it hard.”

“Alright,” Napoleon breathes.

His eyes flick, directing, to his nightstand; Illya reaches for it. And then, as he eases off his trousers, Napoleon’s gaze shifts towards the broad picture windows, observe with subtle approval the fall of starlight on the bed, the dim reading light he left on in the corner. And Illya himself last, his grin lascivious, as if this theatre passes his aesthetics test, both its lighting and its players.

The lubricant in the drawer is as much for break-ins as it is Napoleon’s dalliances. Two fingers inside that glorious ass, Napoleon breathing hard through it; his hand is tight around the back of Illya’s neck like he’s scruffing a cub, and his kiss when Illya leans down to reclaim it is half teeth. All of it intended to capture, to cage.

But Illya is efficient no matter how much Napoleon invites people to linger. He hasn’t even taken his pants off all the way. The need to be inside him seems to burn away thought, reason. There’s nothing left but this. The only man Illya has ever come close to trusting. He spreads his fingers, over-generous with the lubricant, lets them slip away.

He digs his hands into Napoleon’s thighs next and pushes them back. Napoleon is more flexible than a man of his bulk should be, his knees too at ease at chest level. Napoleon grins like he knows what Illya is thinking, cannot help but think, reaches a strong hand up to clutch the headboard to put on even more of a show, and when Illya grits his teeth, starts to press in, his head falls back, the white curve of his throat flushed, ready to draw breath. His whole body open and exposed.

He’s attractive, unfairly so. Illya wants it too much, wants him. Mirrored desires rattle against one another in his head and, unexpectedly, anger takes the fore. He wants to choke him, strike him. Wants him to put up more of a fight, not to be drawn in like this, inexorably caught in the tide of his insipid charms, his manipulations—

“Any day now,” Napoleon says, his voice strained.

Illya’s jaw clenches as he eases forward until they’re skin to skin, a deep sinking thrust. And Napoleon, he moans, actually moans. The filthy son of a bitch. He’s hot inside, so tight, eager. Illya has to shut his eyes briefly. It’s been too long.

Then Napoleon’s other hand, back at Illya’s throat. For a moment Illya thinks Napoleon will choke him instead; the thought is neither good nor bad, just hazy, half-formed, somewhere between the horizons of fury and unbridled want. Every day since they met, there has always been the question of what he will allow. Napoleon might choke him now. Might kill him. Might fuck him someday. Maybe.

Napoleon’s fingers skitter over the hair at the nape of Illya’s neck and hold there again. “If we’re going to do this, you need to be here for it.”

“I am here.”

“You know what I mean.”

Does he? Illya shifts, lets Napoleon’s shiver ripple through him too. The last time, a hostel and furtive hands, another agent. KGB, his brotherhood, but a brotherhood of turned backs and ready knives. He’d never seen her again. Another unmarked grave, or as good as in Siberia.

“Illya,” Napoleon says. Illya acquiesces, curves an arm beneath him, starts to move. Napoleon’s body moves readily with him, knows all the right shifts to make, knows how to cant his hips to take Illya in deeper. He clenches around Illya’s cock, steals the ragged breath from Illya’s lungs with his kisses, the molten heat of his body. It may be on purpose. Napoleon is good at what he does, and one of the things he does is fuck.

He’s not speaking for once, miraculously. Sounds like throaty groans leak from his throat as Illya fucks him, and then start to spill out once he moves harder, faster. The headboard bangs against the wall: the fleur-de-lis wallpaper cracks, antique. One of Napoleon’s hands roves over his back, nails like warnings over the bones of his shoulders. His body is taut, the veins in his forearms a thin river-like shadow up lines of muscle. Straining for release. Illya can provide. The least selfish person in this room.

He spreads those thighs open wider, bucks into him with a slap of skin. Napoleon jerks up, gasps, his cock dribbling precome down onto his abs. Illya swipes his hand in the mess mid-thrust and pushes it up into the thatch of dark hair that skates a path up Napoleon’s chest, lifts his own hand to his mouth to memorize the taste.

“You’re close,” Illya observes. He fails, mostly, to keep his voice dispassionate. Illya thinks he would relish the sight of a too-soon orgasm. The usual crisp cleanness of Napoleon Solo debauched. “Is this another one of your games?”

He thrusts in again, jars the bed with it, and Napoleon jolts again, makes a sound like guttural death. “No games,” he gasps, “not today.”

Illya’s lip curls. “But every other day.”

His lidded eyes flash down to meet Illya’s face. “If there’s something you want, Peril ...” He shifts on the bed, hisses as he lowers his body back down onto Illya’s cock of his own volition, of his own power. “I know you like to be direct.”

But that’s the problem, Illya thinks, in its entirety. There are no words in all the languages they share for what he wants. Gaby overseas, on her own missions, her own woman and yet Illya’s all the same. And the man beneath him, the archetypal seducer, not a shred of anything Illya has ever wanted, and yet here. He takes whatever Illya gives him, broken furniture, broken bones, cock enough to nearly split him in half. All to build whatever this is, precarious and always at a tilt.

“I don’t want anything from you,” Illya says finally.

It’s the truth, or at least the other face of it. Like the Janus face on Napoleon’s ring, it is and isn’t.

And Napoleon, ever the consummate communicator, thinks it over. He says, “But I’m here.”

“... yes,” Illya says.

His head clear at last, singular in purpose, he reaches between them and wraps his hand around Napoleon’s cock. He thrusts in, strokes Napoleon with brutal precision, watches unblinking as Napoleon arches up off the bed, gasps, comes explosively all over them both. And then he slides his hands back over Napoleon’s thighs, smears wet all over his skin as he lifts them up further. Fucks into him savagely, drinking in the sound of his hoarse grunts of encouragement, and comes, sudden as a punch in the gut. The orgasm steals his vision, his breath. It’s too much. Too fast.

But good enough. This game, this one game, has only ever required a slim margin for victory.

 

-

 

Illya gets dressed afterwards, button-down shirt, tan slacks, professorial eveningwear. For his part Napoleon lounges in the bed still, his underwear on, his hair finger-combed into some semblance of presentability. He still looks like a seducer.

“I still have to finish this job, you know,” he says. “With young Mr. Topalli.”

Illya picks the chessboard from the floor and sets it on the side table. Piece by piece, he recreates to perfection the layout of the board as it had been before Napoleon’s arrival.

“Should I expect anymore performance art protests?”

“No.”

He lets the silence sit afterwards and makes his way to the bar. Mineral water with a bow and a silver seal, both of which he pulls with his fingers as he sits back down in his accent chair and leans over the chessboard.

“You’re headed to that science soirée in Antwerp soon, aren’t you,” Napoleon says.

“Yes.”

“I rather like Belgium.”

With his back to the bedroom doorway, Illya can allow himself to smile. “You are thinking of brushing up on your biology.”

“Why, _Peril_ ,” the voice rings out behind him, delighted. From the sound of it the body to whom it belongs has no intention to move, even though Illya’s attention is diverted back to his solitary chessboard, his pile of defeated pawns. Two rooks left on the board and yet neither he would think to spare. “That nearly sounded like a line.”


End file.
